Doreen Thompson

Program Manager SAGE Juvenile Detention Center

My name is Doreen Thompson, and I've worked in juvenile justice services for the last 19 years. The first 14 years were specifically with boys.

About 5 years ago, I was offered the opportunity to work for Community Partners in Action (CPA) and run a girl's community detention center. After being interviewed three times, I denied the offer because I did not think I could work with girls. The more I thought about it, for 14 years I've been fighting for boys and speaking up for them, but I was a girl who'd made bad choices as a kid, and I've been fighting for the boys where I should have been fighting for the girls. So I took the opportunity, and I began managing a girl's detention center that was strictly custody and care. But I had the opportunity to become involved in a project of transforming a facility that was custody and care into a facility that was relational and strength based that looked at the girls as individuals and met the kids were they were, because that's what they are, kids.

Statistically, it takes one positive adult in any kid's life to make a difference. Luckily I had that one adult in my life that did not judge me and cared about me no matter what, and I wanted to be able to do that for the kids that I work for. I knew that if they had that connection with that one adult that we can change things and make a difference for them. CPA gave me that opportunity. They supported me both professionally and personally when things got difficult, so I could go to my program and to make the changes with the staff, with the kids to help the kids and staff become better people. I think this has been an amazing growth for me both as a person, but also as a teacher. I think not only do we impact the kids, but we also impact the staff, which makes them better at doing what they do--and the kids end up benefiting.

The girls that we typically serve can be anywhere between 11 years old to 16 years old. Their crimes are no more that truancy or running away from an abusive home, and that's what my girls get locked up for. The bottom line for my girls is that all they need is someone that cares about them. They don't need to be punished, because they haven't done anything wrong. They've been kids, and I think society as a whole thinks that because they have made some bad choices that they are bad people. The agency's mission is that all people can change. I've always believed that, and working with the girls I work with, I believe that even more now, because I've seen them change and grow. Everybody goes through periods where they are a kid, and they have to get through those bumps and those rough places. I think we give the kids an opportunity to do that--get through those rough places and still love them and still support them and still care about them. Because this is what all of us need. Even as adults, we always don't make the right choices, but we are supported, and we can move on and grow from our poor choices.

I think this is what it is for the girls. It's not rocket science. It's about caring about them about wanting to be with them. It's about wanting to help them grow and help them make better choices. We laugh about it at my program sometimes because we have kids sometimes that re-offend to come back to my program because it's an environment that's safer for them where they feel cared for, where they feel loved. It's a sad statement for our society that the kids find such security and comfort in a locked detention center that they would want to be there rather than in their own environment. My kids have experienced things that I have never experienced in my life, that I don't know as an adult I could experience.

One previously 15 year old kid that was at the program had four younger siblings, she kept getting locked up for running away from home. She was running away because her younger siblings were spread out through foster care, and she was running away from home to go to the foster homes to make sure her younger siblings were alright. This kid was locked up and punished for running away. Nobody asked her why, until she came to the detention center. Is that a crime to want to take care of your four younger siblings? And who at 15 years old should have to? I think they are just kids, and I think we need to look at them for what they are, kids who have been hurt, kids who have been abused, who have been neglected, who have responsibilities that no 14 or 15 year old should have to have. But they are punished when they try to survive through their systems, and that is not right, that they should be punished for that. So we try to create an environment at the detention center to where they get to let go of the responsibility and be kids. For a lot of our kids, that is the first time they had that opportunity to experience just being kids. That is a nice thing. To watch them have balloon water fights or playing games and letting go of all the garbage and be kids.

In the five years I've been out sick four days and that was because of surgery not because of choice situation. I've called my program everyday that I was out. There is not a day that I get up that I don't want to be there or that I don't miss the kids when I go on vacation or think about them, because they matter to me. How could you not go to your job everyday and knowing what kind of impact you are going to have in somebody's life? That's why I get up and go to work everyday because it matters what I do, and it matters to them, and they tell you it matters to them? and that makes all the difference for me.